lorelei
/ˈlɔːɹəlaɪ/
lorelei noun: a siren; a temptress.
Noun
lorelei (plural loreleis)
- A siren; a temptress.
- We grew silly, tongue-tied, said foolish things we did not mean to say, shoved one another about in the boat, and finally overturned it. The loreleis laughed musical little laughs.1965, William Henry Davenport, Ben Siegel, Biography past and present: selections and critical essays
- She was like a mermaid, an isolated creature that lives in fulfillment of its own senses; she lured me on, she was the lorelei of the gleaming river of traffic with its million, brilliant eyes that intermittently flowed between us.1977, Angela Carter, The Passion of New Eve
Proper noun capitalized: Lorelei
Lorelei
- A female given name from German.
Forms of lorelei
| plural | loreleis |
|---|
Origin of lorelei
From the Lorelei rock on the Rhine, which was haunted by one of these creatures according to German legend.
Borrowed from German Lorelei (“murmuring rock or lurking rock”), but not used as a given name in Germany. The Lorelei (or Lorelei, Loreleï, Lore Lay, Lore-Ley, Lurley, Lurelei, Lurlei) is an infamous maritime disaster site because of the Rhine's current and the surrounding terrain. The shipwrecks have been subject to mythological explanation attempts since around 900 AD.
Questions about lorelei
- What does lorelei mean?
- Lorelei means a siren; a temptress.
- What part of speech is lorelei?
- Lorelei can be a noun or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce lorelei?
- Lorelei is pronounced /ˈlɔːɹəlaɪ/.
- What is the plural of lorelei?
- The plural of lorelei is loreleis.
Words near lorelei in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: lorelei (page history and authors); Lorelei (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “lorelei.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lorelei. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.